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Tag: caregivers

We’ve all seen the headlines over the past two years: “XYZ Company Adopts Expansive Paid Parental Leave Policy.” News coverage of paid parental leave (PPL) increased tremendously in 2015-2016 over prior years, fueled by the numerous PPL implementations by big-name companies.

Key questions that arise in assessing the increase in company PPL plans include: Why now…finally? What motivates employers to adopt PPL plans? What lessons can employers learn from the trailblazers’ experiences? What’s next for PPL? We’ll do our best to answer these below.

In mid-January the Integrated Benefit Institute (IBI) hosted an event in San Jose to present the findings of its 2016 study of the tech industry’s burgeoning PPL policies. The study, “. . . And Baby Makes Three (Months Off)”, attempts to answer the above questions and more. At the event, representatives from Facebook, Intuit, and Adobe participated in a panel discussion of their companies’ PPL programs and provided their thoughts and experiences on these issues as well. (And many thanks to Facebook and Intuit for sharing their positive experiences with Matrix as their third party administrator!)

The following information is based on IBI’s report (well worth a read in its entirety) and input from the panel and other employers at the conference.

Why Now?Social and economic factors explain only so much. Yes, tech industry players have been competing fiercely for talent in recent years, but data show that the NASDAQ was booming in 2009, signaling the end of the recession. Along with this came declining unemployment rates overall and specifically in the tech industry. Yet that was not enough to set off a huge jump in PPL as an employee benefit.

Several events from 2009 forward may have created or contributed to the momentum:

In 2009, the New Jersey paid family leave program took effect. (California’s paid family leave program took effect in 2002.)

In 2012 Marissa Meyer was hired as Yahoo! CEO – while she was pregnant.

In 2013 Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, published Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.

The White House Summit on Working Families was held in June 2014, which brought together advocates for such issues as paid family leave, paid sick time, flexible scheduling, and equal opportunities in the workplace.

Whatever the cause, U.S. employers are embracing paid parental leave – and in some cases paid family leave – in ever greater numbers and with increasingly generous plans.

What Motivates Employers?With these events as a backdrop, IBI conducted interviews with 15 established tech companies to discover the motivations driving their adoption of paid parental leave. These fell into four broad categories:

Compete for talent – most companies have no drive to be #1 in PPL offerings, but want to be competitive by offering a reasonable amount of PPL.

Support existing corporate social values – companies want a policy that comports with other expressed corporate values, such as being “family friendly”.

Formalize and coordinate myriad and conflicting local, state, federal, and company leave policies.

De-stigmatize females in workplace – make parental leave equally available to men so women won’t be viewed as taking their jobs less seriously by taking leave.

At the conference, employers also indicated they were motivated by recent legislation requiring paid parental or paid family leave, specifically San Francisco (effective 1/1/17) and New York State (effective 1/1/18).

Key Lessons for EmployersThe IBI interviews and the conference participants provided three key lessons for employers considering adopting a paid parental or paid family leave program. Undoubtedly there are many more but here’s a start:

First, design a policy for what YOUR business is trying to accomplish. Don’t feel pressured just to do what everyone else is doing. Carefully analyze your company’s philosophies, strategies, operational needs, and other factors. Then, design a plan that will mesh with and support those factors. This is not a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all issue.

Second, leverage your company’s FMLA and disability experiences to design and manage a program that will help maintain business performance. You probably already have a lot of experience in similar leave issues – FMLA, state leaves, disability plans, company policies, etc. Use that experience to understand your employees’ leave usage and its impact on business operations.

Finally, focus on improving the employee’s return-to-work experience after an extended leave. A new parent may have difficulty going from parental bonding leave on Sunday to full and productive engagement upon return to work on Monday. Consider easing the employee back to work with a part-time return schedule. Make sure the supervisor doesn’t have an impossible list of tasks waiting for the employee the first day back. On the other hand, ensure that the supervisor and co-workers don’t exclude the returning employee from ongoing projects; rather, design a means to bring the employee up to speed and start contributing.

What’s Next for PPL?Many questions remain as the United States tries to join the rest of the industrialized world to provide adequate paid parental and family leave. There is no “standard” PPL program at this point. Employer discussions at the IBI event revealed numerous plan variations, including:

Equal paid parental leave for all parents, with birth mothers also getting the disability/maternity leave.

Equal total leave for all parents, with the birth mother’s leave being partially funded by a disability plan.

Paid family leave that includes both bonding leave but also time off to care for other family members.

Paid parental time off ranging from 6 weeks to 12 months.

Different amounts of paid leave depending on whether the employee self-identifies as the primary or secondary caregiver.

Intermittent bonding leave – disallowed completely by some employers, while others allow intermittent leave in as small as one-day increments.

Pay provided at a percentage of the employee’s compensation or fully paid at 100%.

Coverage extended to assist with adoption proceedings and/or infertility treatments, or to care for foster children.

Other challenges and questions for the future of PPL in the United States include:

How can companies keep up with and comply with state and local laws?

Can paid family leave programs solve the issue of perceived unfairness, such as birth mothers getting more time than other new parents under most plans?

The IBI study is based on tech industry. What are the implications and likely trends for other industries?

Will today’s plan designs suit the upcoming parenting years of the Millennials, or will changes be needed?

Will the Trump presidency have any impact on the future of PPL in the United States? Trump’s campaign platform included a belated and tepid paid leave proposal – up to 6 weeks for the birth mother only, funded and administered by the existing federal unemployment program, and available only if the employer does not provide other maternity leave benefits.

What is YOUR company doing or considering in the world of paid parental and family leave? Please share with us in the comments section below.

My thanks to IBI and its Director of Research and Measurement, Brian Gifford, Ph.D, for hosting the event and sharing such valuable information with the employer community.

MATRIXCANHELP! We closely track the trends and legislation relating to paid parental and family leave, and will keep you posted on legislative, agency, and court developments through this blog and our monthly On Your Radar update.

Matrix Absence Management provides leave, disability, and accommodation management services to employers seeking a comprehensive and compliant solution to these complex employer obligations. At Matrix we monitor the many state and municipal family and sick leave laws being passed around the country and specialize in understanding how they work together. For leave management and accommodation assistance, contact us at ping@matrixcos.com.

With many employees living life as the “Sandwich Generation,” job protections for family caregivers are becoming ever more important. An August 18 blog post from the US Department of Labor highlights the issue in part by taking a brief look at paid leave programs in 3 states and job protection under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Many employers don’t realize the extent of job protections for family caregivers. Here I will take you on a quick tour of these workplace rights. In October I will have the pleasure of presenting this topic in depth at the annual HRSouthwest conference in Ft. Worth. To my knowledge this will be the first presentation of its kind, addressing the many sources of protection and what employers need to do to ensure compliance. Here is a quick summary to whet your appetite!

Family and Medical Leave Act. This is no surprise to those of you familiar with the FMLA. This federal law provides up to 12 weeks of job protected leave of absence per leave year for an employee to care for a family member with a serious health condition. Several states have similar laws – including California, Colorado (limited to domestic and civil union partners), Connecticut, District of Columbia (OK, that’s not a state), Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. In addition, even more states have protected leaves of absence for pregnancy disability (a kind of family care, right?) and bonding. The FMLA and most state family leave statutes also prohibit retaliation against employees who seek to exercise these leave rights.

Americans with Disabilities Act. Did you know that the ADA protects employees who have family members (or other close individuals) with disabilities? The “association provision” of the ADA prohibits employment discrimination against a person because of his or her known relationship or association with a person with a known disability. This means that an employer is prohibited from making adverse employment decisions based on unfounded concerns about the known disability of a family member or anyone else with whom the applicant or employee has a relationship or association. For example, an employer cannot terminate an employee because her husband (or best friend or roommate or…) has been diagnosed with cancer and the employer is concerned the employee will miss time from work to care for her husband and take him to medical treatments.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This statute is best known for its workplace protections against discrimination, harassment, and retaliation for members of protected classes (e.g., race, sex, religion, national origin). However, there can be circumstances where, because of an employee’s protected classification, he or she is discriminated against due to caregiver responsibilities. Here are some examples:

Denying a woman with young children an employment opportunity that is available to men with young children.

Denying a male caregiver leave to care for an infant under circumstances where such leave would be granted to a female caregiver.

Reassigning a woman to less desirable projects based on the assumption that, as a new mother, she will be less committed to her job.

Paid Family Benefits/Leave Laws. A recent trend in workplace benefits is toward pay for workers who take time off to care for a family member or to bond with a new child. California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island each mandate a pay benefit during leaves of absence taken for these reasons. New York will join the field in 2018. And effective January 1, 2017, San Francisco will require employers to top off the California paid parental leave benefit to equal 100% of the worker’s base salary (subject to some limitations). Many of these laws provide paid leave benefits but not job protection during the leave; however, most employers treat the time off as job-protected and restore the employee to his/her position following the paid leave.

California Fair Employment and Housing Act. I’ve saved the best for last. It may be that, in California, an employer has a duty to provide anaccommodation to an employee associated with an individual with a disability – not just refrain from discriminating against the employee because of the family member’s disability. The CA FEHA provides worker protections similar to the ADA (among many other things). One little-known FEHA provision was recently put to the test in Luis Castro-Ramirez v. Dependable Highway Express. In this case the California court of appeals ruled that an employee with a son who required dialysis on a scheduled basis was entitled to an accommodation under FEHA to meet his son’s dialysis needs. The ruling was based on the language of the statute which defined a physical disability to include an employee who is associated with a person who has, or is perceived to have, a physical disability. Examples include, as in this case, time off from work to provide required medical care or transportation to appointments.

More to come. Stay tuned here for more information as Matrix develops further information on protections for employees who are family member caregivers. Let me know if you have questions or ideas that you would like to have addressed. This is an important topic for a sizable portion of the US workforce. We want to help keep you on the cutting edge.

MATRIXCANHELP! Matrix provides leave, disability, and accommodation management services to employers seeking a comprehensive and compliant solution to these complex employer obligations. We monitor the many leave laws being passed around the country and specialize in understanding how they work together. For leave management and accommodation assistance, contact us at ping@matrixcos.com.